


On The Same Page

by SunMoonAndSpoon



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 06:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20205031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMoonAndSpoon/pseuds/SunMoonAndSpoon
Summary: "Akito, the person I felt closer to than any other human being on earth, looked like a stranger. A young woman in a gray t-shirt dress, with her short dark hair pinned up in a red plastic barrette. Her body was bony and weak, her eyes were ringed, and she had eczema on her elbows. Her lower lip had a scrap of dead skin peeling off of it.Everything godly about her was gone. It had been there, and then it wasn’t. I had loved her so much I would have jumped off a cliff for her amusement, and now I was just annoyed that she still hadn’t figured out how to wash her own clothes."Shigure has loved Akito since before he ever met her. Nothing can touch that deep abyss of love - not infidelity, not abuse, nothing. But when the curse breaks and Shigure has to learn to love her as a flawed human being.This story moves from Shigure's first dream about Akito to the moment they realize that they're about to become parents, and tracks the changes in their relationship over those years.





	On The Same Page

**Author's Note:**

> This was a commission for a lovely anonymous person who asked for a retelling of Shigure and Akito’s relationship. I decided to focus on the missing scenes - ones that were alluded to in canon - rather than the ones that were explicitly shown. So, it’s focused less on specific actions geared toward breaking the curse, and more on his relationship with Akito - specifically the shift from thinking about his as a goddess who he adores and resents to seeing her as a flawed human being who he has to learn to love in a different way. 
> 
> I couldn’t include every idea that I had due length constraints, but I hope the story offers some insight into Shigure’s complicated personality. 
> 
> Thanks to the anon for commissioning me, and thanks to my best friend and to my sister for letting me randomly describe scenes I was working on so I could brag about parts I was proud of or work out what to do next!

At five, my body was too fragile to contain the love that flooded it.

  
At the time, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced. My life until then had been nothing. Digging for worms in the yard with Hatori and Ayame, reading books aimed at grown-ups when I could sneak them from my parents’ bookshelves, eating candy I’d stolen from the bottom of my mother’s purse. I felt a constant, excruciating emptiness that I would have given anything to fill.  
  
When I had a beautiful dream at five years old, the void was replaced by something bright and warm - but fleeting Unless I found a way to hold onto it, I would be destroyed by a glimpse of paradise.  
  
As Hatori, Ayame, Kureno and I clustered around Ren’s legs, I knew that what was growing inside of her was my permanent ticket out of the void. That whoever was in there was the person I’d worship for the rest of my life.   


No one could have have prevented my heart from tearing itself to shreds with the force of my love. I had no one to resent by myself.

~`~`~

“I’m about to violate patient confidentiality,” said Hatori.  
  
He was in the middle of giving me a flu shot that I was dangerously overdue for, so I thought that he meant my patient confidentiality.  
  
“You have the right,” I said, laughing as the needle slid out of my arm. “You’ve been after me to get this shot for the past month and I’ve just been putting you off for no reason. You can tell everyone how annoying I am, it’s fine.”  
  
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, tearing open a band-aid. “This is actually far more serious.”  
  
“Haa-san, what could be more serious than the health of your patients? What if I’d actually come down with the flu before I got the vaccine? Don’t you know that the flu can be fatal? You’re a medical professional, aren’t you?”  
  
Hatori held up a hand. I didn’t want to stop talking - there was a strong chance that the patient in question was Akito, and that whatever he had to say about her would devastate me. Had the headache that had kept her in bed for a full week bloomed into something worse? Was she pregnant? I didn’t want to know.

“This is probably going to make you angry,” he said, applying the band-aid. “If it does, you need to handle it on your own time - actually, you can yell at me if it helps. What you can’t do is take your anger to Akito.”  
  
“Ah, so it is about her.”  
  
Hatori lit a cigarette, and took a drag. “You don’t care about anyone else,” he said.  
  
“That’s unfair, Haa-san. I care about plenty of other people. You, for example. How have you been lately? Any progress toward quitting smoking?”  
  
“Stop changing the subject. This isn't easy for me to tell you, and you’re making it harder.”  
  
“Sorry, sorry.” I leaned sideways, propped my head up the heel of my hand. “So? What is it?”  
  
“She slept with Kureno. She called it a display of ownership - I don’t know if that was really her motivation, but I certainly hope not. In any case, it happened.”  
  
I felt something twist in my chest, but I tried to breathe past it. If I got angry now, I’d never hear the rest of the story. I would control my reaction even if I gave myself a heart attack in the process.  
  
“Go on,” I said.  
  
He took long drag from his cigarette, shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t have any of the information you’d be interested in. I have no idea what sexual acts they engaged in. I have no idea if she loves him, or if she feels any remorse whatsoever. All I know is that there was a physical impact that I had to treat her for.”  
  
My cheeks felt hot and I could hear my own heartbeat. “What physical impact?” I asked. “Did Kureno hurt her? Is she pregnant? Did he give her an STD? You have to tell me at least that.”  
  
“No, nothing like that.” Hatori pinches the bridge of his nose. “If you must know, her hip pain was exacerbated by having sex. I was ready to go yell at you about it, because you should know by now how to avoid that problem - that’s when Akito told me she’d been with Kureno.”  
  
“I’m going to kill him,” I said, my voice as bland as unseasoned tofu.  
  
“As long as you mean that metaphorically, do as you like. Just don’t rile up Akito - I don’t want her getting sick from the stress, and I don't want to have to pick glass out of your face or set your broken arm after she attacks you.”  
  
“The world doesn’t revolve around making your job easier or harder, Haa-san.” I laughed, leaning backward in my chair and draping an arm dramatically across my face. “I’ve been betrayed! If this were a work of Shakespeare, I’d be well within my rights to murder the both of them. If it were Tolstoy, I could reasonably expect her to toss herself in front of a train out of guilt.”  
  
“Neither Othello nor Anna Karenina’s actions were laudable - besides, you and Akito are more like Catherine and Heathcliff than either of those characters.”  
  
These characters all hailed from books that I’d read during Intro to European Literature during college, and I’d talked Hatori’s ear off about them all. Later, I’d appreciate that he remembered them, but at the time, my body was buzzing and popping with rage.  
  
“Thank you for telling me about this,” I croaked, my voice catching in my throat. I was nauseated by a sudden surge of emotion, and it felt like I'd been kicked in the chest. It took some deep breathing before I could speak again.  
  
“I expect you to approach this rationally," said Hatori, pressing a glass of water into my hands. “Don't make me regret telling you the truth.”  
  
I downed the drink and winced when it hit my stomach. “This is painful,” I said, clutching my chest. “It actually hurts my heart. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”  
  
“No," said Hatori. “Akito makes everybody feel that way. You aren’t immune to her because you’re in love with her - all that means is that she has more ways to hurt you. You might end up so damaged that you can't ever recover.”  
  
“I”ll be fine,” I said. The words were bitter like over-steeped tea.  


~`~`~  
  
I was fully prepared to beat Kureno bloody, but three things stopped me. The first was that I wasn’t particularly strong. Kureno was no body builder, but he could be found most mornings at the Sohma swimming pool. In a physical fight, I would lose.  
  
The second was that I didn’t want to give Akito the satisfaction of knowing that two of her possessions were fighting for her favor. I wanted to break her god complex, not feed it.  
  
The third was that I sensed that Kureno had his reasons for sleeping with her - reasons that flowed from a deep well of pain.  
  
When I saw Kureno next, he was reading on Akito’s porch while she napped inside. It was a book by another author whose work Micchan oversaw - one who was even more of a hassle for her than I was, because her drafts were a disaster where mine were usually beyond reproach. I thought about telling Kureno an anecdote or two, but decided against it. We weren’t here for small talk.  
  
He put down his book, and turned to look at me as I walked up to the couch. He asked if he could help me.  
  
“I have a bone to pick with you, Kureno. You know perfectly well what you’ve done.”  
  
This was a guess - I had no idea whether Kureno would realize what I was talking about, or if he’d cop to it if he did. Luckily for me, he was blunt. “I guess you heard that I slept with Akito?”  
  
“Straight to the point! I suppose you want to get this over with as badly as I do?”  
  
Kureno nodded, then began assuring me that he had no romantic or sexual interest in her whatsoever. “We had an argument, and she panicked - she thought I was going to move out. She offered me her body in exchange for forgiveness. I wanted her to accept that I wasn’t angry anymore, but I didn’t think she’d believe me unless I took up her offer.”  
  
I crossed my arms. “So you had sex with her because you felt sorry for her.”  
  
“That’s a crass way to put it, but yes.”  
  
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’d almost rather that were horny for her. You do realize that we’re talking about a person who exists to reign terror over our entire family? She’s a living god, not a fragile little girl.”  
  
“You didn’t see her sobbing her heart out when it occurred to her that I could leave,” said Kureno, looking up at me with earnest, sparkling eyes. “She’ll break if she isn’t protected.”  
  
“She isn’t going to die because she cried too hard,” I said, breathing deeply to steady my tone as much as possible. “Eventually, she would have stopped crying, and she would have had to figure out another solution to her problems. I know it’s easier to think of her as a precious baby pigeon than to see yourself as a victim, but you have to face reality. Otherwise you do things like this.”  
  
With a shrug, Kureno told me that he had to leave - the post office would be closing soon, and he had to pick up a package for Hatori. Conversation over, I was miffed, but couldn’t be bothered with him. I had a deity to crush.

~`~`~  
  
After that discussion, I slept with Akito’s mother. I could think of nothing else that would similarly appall her.  


It wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated. Despite being a decrepit old man of 26, Akito was the only person I’d ever had sex with. I was ill-prepared to pleasure a woman my own mother’s age. Besides that, I had little interest in anybody I didn’t love. It helped to imagine her as an adult version of Akito, but I shuddered to imagine Akito remaining that cruel. 

Ren had only agreed to this because it would hurt her daughter - she wasn’t attracted to me, either. But we made it work. Neither of us came, but what mattered was the act and not the process. At the end, we lay plastered together on a bed the size of a haunted house, while she stroked my hair and told me how ugly I was compared to her late husband. 

Smirking, I said, “I could say the same thing about you and your daughter, but I’m too much of a gentleman.”  
  
She shoved me so hard that my shoulder clashed against the headboard, then told me to get out. 

~`~`~

When I walked into Akito’s room to tell her what I’d done, she was making flowers out of crepe paper. I picked one up, and tore the edge off one of the petals. She looked up at me, her mouth agape. “I was going to give those to you!” she shrieked.

“Really? Because I thought that you were making them for Kureno.”

Though my voice was calm, it lit Akito up with an incandescent rage. Rising from her craft table, she stalked over to me. As she struck my cheek, I gritted my teeth and tried not to flinch.  
  
“The nerve of you!” she shrieked, grabbing me by the shirt collar. “What the hell do you mean by bringing up Kureno? What are you trying to imply, Shigure?!”  
  
I grabbed her by the hand and removed it from my shirt, earning a fresh round of screaming. When she stopped for a breath, I said, “you already know, or you wouldn’t be reacting like this. You fucked Kureno.”  
  
Her eyes were as massive as planets. For a moment it seemed as if she might apologize - and I wished I’d taken Hatori's advice. But it was too late. I’d chosen my course and I had to see it through.  
  
“It’s okay,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not angry anymore. I was, but I got over it after I got my revenge.”  
  
Her big eyes narrowed. “What revenge?” she spat, her voice so sluiced with venom she was nearly choking on it.  
  
“I slept with your mother. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? We should be even now.” My voice cracked with laughter as she hurled the flowers - and a pair of scissors - toward my head. I managed to dodge the scissors, but the fake petals clung to my hair.  
  
“How dare you?!" she spat, launching herself forward in an attempt to knock me to the ground. At the time, I thought that she was powered by fury, but I know now that it was terror. Dodging her was easy at first, but she came at me again and again, her screams more high-pitched and broken each time. 

“I don’t need filthy, disobedient beasts like you in my Zodiac, so just get out!” she howled, clinging to my arms like she’d drown if I actually pulled them away.

“You don’t live here anymore!” she wailed, pressing her face into my chest and dampening my kimono. I shrugged, pulled my arms from her grasp, and walked away. It felt as if both of my arms had been ripped off, and I was leaving them behind.

~`~`~

After being kicked out, I stayed with Ayame for a few weeks, helping him out at the shop in exchange for room and board. I expected Akito to cool off after a few days, but she didn’t. I started renting out one of the Sohma properties - one that was slated to be demolished before I asked to stay there. 

We didn’t completely avoid each other. Akito would call the house and then hang up when I answered, or send me mournfully threatening letters that I did not respond to. She popped up from time to time, terrorizing the kids in my care, weeping to me over the phone about all the pity she deserved and didn't receive. Sometimes I told her I loved her, sometimes I told her to go to hell. It went on like this for years. 

Once I sense the curse might be on its way out, I decided it was time to reconnect. I slept over at the main house, leaving no excuse for the children. I couldn’t tell them the truth about where I was going, because it would throw all three of them into varying states of panic. Disappearing for a full night would spark some worry too, but I didn’t care. I was too focused on my objective for the night. 

Before we spoke, we went to bed together. She was wearing what I’d asked her to - a green yukata with white dogs slinking around the sleeves. To avoid hurting her hips, she had to lay on her side, and hold a pillow between her knees. The instant she was situated, I untied her yukata, and then untied my own. 

I wanted to savor our time together, because I knew my curse could break at any moment. Before that happened, I wanted to tear off her clothes and enter her like a virus breaking into a cell. To possess her godly essence before I could no longer perceive it.  
  
She let out a low, guttural moan when I pushed myself inside of her, grabbed my hair by the fistful and grunted until we were finished. Every sound was speckled with gold. We stopped, panting and tangled in each other’s arms.  
  
I stroked her hair, kissed along the arch of her eyebrow, down the length of her neck. Wrapped my arms around her - the only woman I could remain human for - and held her so tightly that I imagined her bones cracking under the pressure.  
  
Her face was pressed into my chest, but I could tell from the lift of her cheeks that she was smiling. I was proud to be the cause of that smile, but I also wanted to slap her in the face until it dissolved. Until she cried. 

Imprisoned by both her godly status and my own social training, I did not hit her.

Instead, I kissed the ridge of her ear and said, “we should probably list all of the terrible things you’ve done, shouldn’t we? There are so many, you’ve likely forgotten at least half of them. You’ll have to remember them all if you ever want to atone for them.” 

The sleepy smile slid from her lips like blood from a wound. She sat up, pushed me away. Slid her arms into her yukata, and stood up, hands curled into shaking fists.  
  
“I haven’t forgotten anything!” she snapped, her voice frothing with blood. “I’ll never forget anything that I’ve done to my Zodiac. Those terrible things are all that I’ll have left when they leave me. I won’t be able to make any good memories with them because they’re all leaving me! So, I’ll never forget…”  
  
She broke down within seconds, sobbing into her sleeves and laying back down beside me. I rubbed her back, cringing at and reveling in the way I could feel ever notch in her spine. Later, I would feed her something warm and nourishing. Curry maybe, or soup. Maybe one day she’d let me take her out for ramen.  
  
I wasn’t sure anymore what I was trying to accomplish - initially, I’d just wanted to make her feel guilty, but I no longer thought I could do that. I also didn't know why I wanted her guilt. I wanted her to change, and she was changing. This was nothing - just me being cruel.  
  
But I kept going. I whispered in her ear, “let’s cement it in your memory.”  
  
Arms locked around her shoulders, I told her about how she’d stolen Hatori’s eye and his beloved Kana, how she’d knocked Kisa across the room and pushed Rin off of a building and locked her in the cats’ room, forced Yuki to grow up alone in the dark, punched Momiji and punched Tohru; she’d stabbed Kureno and choked her mother. How she’d made me fall in love with her, and fucked Kureno to spite me.  
  
“That’s the part that makes you angriest,” she snarled, digging crescent moons into my arms with her nails. “I’ve probably ruined Yuki forever - Hatori, too. But you don’t care - all you care about is whether some other dog pissed on your territory. I bet you’re jealous that I stabbed him but couldn’t be bothered to stab you.”  
  
I took her hand and lifted it from where she was scratching me. “Oh, no, I hate pain. And I’m not _quite _that selfish - of course I care that you’ve hurt other people. But it’s not my place to forgive you for that, is it? You’ll have to ask them if you want absolution. All I can do is forgive you for betraying me.”  
  
“Are you forgiving me for that?” Her voice was the kind of brittle that meant she’d either burst into tears again and beg for my loyalty, or rake her nails down my face and demand my obedience. 

I leaned in to kiss her eyelid, which was twitching wildly. I said, “are you going to be mine alone from now on?”  
  
“I’m not going to cheat on you,” she said, pressing her forehead into mine, locking her arms around my shoulders. “But our bond is breaking - you're going to abandon me just like everyone else will.”  
  
“If I was going to do that, I’d have done it already. I’ve always been stronger than the curse, and I always will be. I chose to fall in love with you. I chose to maintain that love despite intimate knowledge of your inner monster.”  
  
“Maybe you’re just afraid to leave what’s familiar,” she said. The set of her arms suddenly felt less clingy and more protective, as if I were a child she were attempting to comfort. “Yuki wrote me a letter where he said that he didn't want to see or hear from me for a full year. He also confessed that he was afraid of creating that distance, because it was lonely to be cut off from God. You could feel the same way.”  
  
“That’s not it,” I said, finger trailing across her collarbone. “If I wanted familiar, I’d stay in my house and let you rot here by yourself. I want us to have a life together. That’s why I’m telling you to remember everything that you’ve done - to air them out and deal with them so that we can move forward.”  
  
Eyes closed, she murmured, “so you do you forgive me for Kureno?”  
  
“Show me with your actions that you deserve my forgiveness," I said. “But make it your last priority. I’ll be here to love you while you work through atoning for all of your other crimes, whether I forgive you or not.” 

~`~`~

Shortly after we moved in together, Akito caught a cold and then immediately passed it along to me.

Illness wasn’t forcing me to transform as it had in the past, so I could carry on as usual save for the occasional sneezing fit. Meanwhile, Akito’s overall health hadn’t changed since the curse broke. I spent the week putting wet towels on her forehead, making tea on demand, and rubbing her back when she coughed. It was a privilege to be placed in charge of her care, but I also found it tiresome. I was irritated by the grinding snorts she emitted whenever she breathed in, and the way she left used tissues underneath her pillow.

Akito’s minor faults had never annoyed me before. It was only when her behavior turned criminal that the vast swollen river of love inside of me would dry up even slightly. I had loved her as a goddess, and now I had to love her as a person. It was harder than I had anticipated.  
  
“Gross,” I said, sweeping the tissues into a trash can. “You’re getting snot all over the blankets.”  
  
“Shut up, who cares?” she groaned, bopping me in the shoulder with a box of tissues. “You’re already sick anyway, so it’s not like we have to worry about contagion.”  
  
“Right, but this is how you got me sick to begin with. You need to learn better habits if you’re going to live with another person.”  
  
After coughing, she told me that I needed to learn to shut up before she set me on fire.  
  
“Listen, I’m not taking this as an actual threat, but you’ve got to stop saying things like that so casually. You’ve never set anybody on fire that I know about, but I wouldn’t put it past you.”  
  
I hadn’t intended for this to make her cry, but I hadn’t intended to avoid it, either. When she started bawling, I felt less guilty than I thought I would, which made me feel guilty in a different way. Our magical bond was irrevocably broken. I would never be able to love her in quite the same way I once did.  
  
“Haven’t I repented enough?!” she shrieked, pulling her blanket over her head, leaving only her legs visible. “What more do I have to do for you to look at me like I’m anything other than a monster? Do you seriously think that I’d set you on fire? If you think that, what in the hell are you doing here?!”  
  
“No, I don’t think that. I’m sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.” I pulled the blanket away, revealing a face wet and swollen with tears. I rubbed her back through a harsh coughing fit, then wrapped my arms around her, letting her cry into my chest until she was worn out.  
  
“Did you only stay with me so that you could torture me? ” Akito howled. Her tears and snot were creating a damp patch on my yukata. “Why are you like this?”  
  
After grabbing a tissue to dab her face clean, I told her again that I was sorry.  
  
“If you’re sorry, you should behave differently!” she moaned, pushing me in the chest before falling back onto our bed. “Be nice to me! I’m already suffering enough without you adding to it.”  
  
“Why are you suffering? Is it that you’re feeling sick, or is it something deeper? We need to actually discuss these things if we’re going to be together.”  
  
“What do you think?! You already know everything about me, and you’re _mine, _so you should be able to figure it out without me telling you!”  
  
“I can’t do that. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. You have to learn to articulate your problems with words.”  
  
“Could you be any more condescending?! You aren’t my father, Shigure!”  
  
“No, I’m not. Your father did nothing but lie to you, and your mother took his lies and reversed them. I can guide you toward finding your own truth - sometimes.” I grabbed a tissue, drained my nose into it, then threw it in the trash.  
  
“Not always, though,” I said with a sniff. “Sometimes, like now, I’m not up for it because I don't feel well. Or maybe I want to go out for drinks with Ayame, or I have to spend time doing work. That’s why you have to be able to tell me what you need - because I won't always be available to pretend I can read your mind.”  
  
“You're not listening to me! I told you already! You were never planning on letting me move past what I've done - you’re just here to remind me of how terrible I am!” She stops, wracked by a coughing fit that leaves her sputtering and breathless.  
  
Rubbing circles on her back, I asked, “what would be the point of that? I don't want you to think that you're terrible. I want you to love yourself as much as I love you.”  
  
“How much do you love me? I need something quantifiable. Would you still love me if I said it was me who pushed Tohru off that cliff? Or do you love her more than you love me?”  
  
I ignored the Tohru question, as it was besides the point. I said, “my love is not infinite. I’m sorry, but it’s not. I’ll give up almost anything for you - my morals, my health, my sanity, my friends - but I can’t love you like a subject loves a god. Not anymore. I can only love you like a human loves another human.”  
  
Palm cupped to her cheek, I added, “With that in mind, will you marry me?”  


After that, I started coughing. Akito looked up at me with bleary, baffled eyes. “You’re asking me this now? When we’re in the middle of an argument and we're both sick? Really?”  
  
“What was that cliche? If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best.”  
  
“My worst is a lot worse than your worst.”  
  
“True,” I said, bundling her whole body into my arms and laying us both down to rest on the pillows. Her body was fever-hot, but she was shivering. “So, what’s your answer?”  
  
“I already promised to be with you forever,” she whispered, wreathing her fingers through mine. “Of course I’ll make it legal if that’s what you want.”  
  
~`~`~

When we were both feeling better, I started teaching Akito how to do laundry. She’d always handed off the task to Kureno or one of her attendants, and she’d never learned to do it herself. 

My struggle to see Akito as human intensified once my thoughts weren't clouded by illness. Rather than adoration, I felt sneering resentment. How had this pathetic little girl gone 20-odd years without ever learning this basic life skill? Normally, thoughts like these would be immediately replaced with syrupy love, but this time, it didn’t happen. Instead, it was replaced with an emptiness so painful that I was tempted to eat the laundry detergent to fill it.  
  
Akito, the person I felt closer to than any other human being on earth, looked like a stranger. A young woman in a gray t-shirt dress, with her short dark hair pinned up in a red plastic barrette. Her body was bony and weak, her eyes were ringed, and she had eczema on her elbows. Her lower lip had a scrap of dead skin peeling off of it.  
  
Everything godly about her was gone. It had been there, and then it wasn’t. I had loved her so much I would have jumped off a cliff for her amusement, and now I was just annoyed that she still hadn’t figured out how to wash her own clothes.  
  
Loving her that way had been a burden, in the way that having a stomach was a burden. It could hurt sometimes, if I fed it the wrong thing or let someone like Akito get too close to it with a knife. It could even fill itself with tumors and kill me - but without it, I’d need a whole lot of help if I wanted to survive. 

If I left her, I would simply be leaving - not dismembering myself. The love I still had for Akito was a normal kind of love - the kind you can fall out of. The kind you can replace with something easier. 

But because it was normal, it was a choice. I could choose to love her as a human being, not as a god. I’d worked to break the curse so that I could make that choice. She had worked harder than she’d ever worked in her life to give me that choice. 

I was going to have to keep choosing her, consciously, every day. That was the promise I’d made to the both of us.  
  
“You seem to be having trouble getting started,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “What’s tripping you up?”  
  
“It’s just hitting me that I’ve never done this before,” she said, flipping the bottle of detergent from one hand to the other. “I don’t know how to cook for myself, or take public transportation…I’m missing so many basic life skills because I just let attendants take care of everything for me.”  
  
“And Kureno,” I said. She glared at me, but said nothing. I continued, explaining that that wasn't a dig at her. “Kureno is gone, but the attendants still work here. You’re still paying them for their services. If you don’t want to do you own laundry or cook your own meals, you actually can rely on them to do it for you.”  
  
“I know, but I want to try and be a little more independent. Relying on other people to fulfill my needs has been a disaster.”  
  
Her breath hitched, so I leaned forward to kiss her forehead. “That doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone,” I said. “It’s good to take control of your own life, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be anyone around to help you. That’s what I’m here for.”  
  
“To teach me how to do laundry?” She pressed her forehead into my chest.  
  
“Yes, and all the other things you’ll need to learn if you want to be an adorable little housewife just like Tohru-chan!”  
  
Predictably, that quip was answered with a shove to the chest. “I never said I was doing _your _laundry, asshole!”  
  
“I’m just kidding!” I laughed, picking up her laundry basket and starting to separate the lights from the darks.  
  
She crossed her arms and refused to meet my gaze, then sighed. “You know, I used to hate the fact that you thought you could be sarcastic toward me. I wanted you to either love me or fear me so much that it was impossible. It looks like if I’m going to marry you, I just have to accept you being a jerk…is that it?”  
  
“I am a jerk, and I’m probably not going to change of my own volition. I’ve been working too hard to try and change you. If you want me to change, that’ll be your project. I welcome your attempts.”  
  
“No,” she said, plucking at the sleeve of one of her unwashed t-shirts. “I’m done trying to control people. If I decide you’re too much of a jerk for me to deal with, we’ll just get a divorce. You’re responsible for changing yourself.”  
  
I had to admit that she had a point.  
  
~`~`~  


“I’ve decided to quit writing,” I said as I added sesame oil to my ramen. Akito froze mid-slurp.  
  
“What, so that you can hold over my head how much you’ve sacrificed for me?” she asked, angrily shoveling a piece of bok choy into her mouth.  
  
“Babe, that’s your thing, not mine.” I stole a piece of menma out of her soup, a move that lost me an entire piece of karaage. 

“No,” I said. “It’s so that I can help you manage the family’s affairs. I never realized how much effort you put into keeping things afloat. Before we got together I thought that you spent most of your spare time walking in circles around the rock garden and yelling at birds. Turns out that there are things like property taxes and roof maintenance to deal with.”

After swallowing her pilfered chicken, she asked, “why would I want someone who didn’t even realize I had a job helping me?” 

“Because you love me and I love you?” I batted my eyelashes, earning a baleful look.  


“Really? You sure don't act like it.” 

This recrimination had a different tone than the earlier ones. She was smiling where in the past she would have been weeping. She followed it up with, “if you really loved me, you’d give me another piece of your kaarage.”  
  
“Okay, fine, but only because I’m going to order more at your expense,” I said, reaching for the menu. “Seriously, though, I want to ease some of your burden. Besides, I’m sure Micchan will be thrilled to be rid of me.”  
  
“But you write beautifully,” Akito said, wreathing her fingers through mine. “I don’t care if you write for a living, but I don’t want you to stop being creative because of me. I love reading your work, and I want to keep reading it.”  
  
“I didn’t say I was quitting all together. I just have other things in mind. Including another writing project - someone needs to record our family’s history for future generations, and who better than me, the most meddlesome, nosy member of the clan?”  
  
Squeezing my hand, she said, “I think that’s a wonderful idea. You have my blessing.”  
  
“I would do it whether I had your blessing or not, but thank you, my darling. It means a lot that you support me.”  
  
Akito’s response to that was to steal my last piece of kaarage.  


~`~`~

Our wedding was a disgustingly opulent 200+ person gala where we dressed in expensive wedding kimonos and slapped on plastic grins while photographers blinded us with flashbulbs. It took less than an hour for Akito to develop a migraine. She spent most of the reception in the bridal suite with a wet towel over her face.  
  
During the time I didn’t spend stroking her hair until she fell asleep, I was getting shit-faced with Ayame, who was attempting to propose to every single guest on behalf of his younger brother. By the time Yuki’s fiance Machi angrily identified herself, I was too drunk to do anything but laugh into the silk table cloth I’d just spilled sake onto. I didn’t see my wife again until the reception was nearly over, and I was so wasted that I was clinging to Hatori’s arm for support.  
  
“Get off,” Hatori said, nudging me so I’d straighten up. “I need to examine Akito.” Before I could find my balance, he shoved me onto my mother’s lap. She had been sitting on one of the couches in the wedding venue lobby with Satsuki, making approving noises about the photos of Satsuki’s three-year-old.  
  
I slurred a greeting, fell forward so that my head was on my mother’s shoulder. Before I could roll over and sit on the couch, my mother threw her arms around my neck and started sobbing.  
  
In my drunken state, I couldn’t figure out why she was crying, so I just pet her head and made a joke about how I would beat up whoever was making her upset if I weren’t wearing such fancy clothing. Satsuki fluttered around her, squeaking questions about her well-being. My wife turned her head to look at the wall.  
  
Through breathy, hiccuping gasps, my mother wailed, “you've been my son for nearly thirty years and I’ve never been able to hold you without you transforming!”  
  
I didn't think that I felt sad, but the tears bubbling up in my eyes said otherwise. Unlike other Zodiac mothers, mine had been able to hug me safely. I wasn’t a seahorse who could be crushed or a cow who could do the crushing. But my human skin had never felt my mother's sustained embrace. I didn’t think that this was something I’d missed, but it was. We clung to each other for nearly two minutes, weeping, until I heard my wife’s voice sing out.  
  
“I’m sorry that I didn’t break the curse sooner,” she said. Tears were rivering down her face, disturbing her makeup. “I couldn’t have changed anything that happened before I was born, but I could have done something about it before he grew up. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’ll never get that time back with each other and it’s all my fault.”  
  
After dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, my mother extended an arm toward Akito. 

“Sweetheart,” she said, pulling her onto the couch with us. “We’re here to celebrate the future, not regret the past. I forgive you. From now on, you’re my daughter.”  
  
“Thank you!” Akito howled, falling against me and crying into my shoulder. “Thank you so much!”  
  
As the three of us sobbed onto each other, I overheard Hatori tell Satsuki to grab us some water. Oddly, that made me feel like Akito and I were more loved and protected than anything else that had happened that day. 

~`~`~

One day in deep summer, we got a request that I never thought we’d receive. 

Hatori and Mayuko needed a babysitter. Mayuko had broken her leg, a problem that wouldn’t wait for them to find someone more suitable.  
  
Though it’d been years since Akito had done anything violent, she was still the reason behind Hatori’s partial blindness. I was trustworthy to the extent that I would stop Akito from hurting the child if it came to it, but I wasn’t sure that Hatori realized that.  
  
He must have been terrified to leave Kinu-chan with us. Akito and I both knew it.  
  
“I have no idea how to take care of a baby,” Akito said, wringing her hands as I mixed up the formula I’d taken from Hatori’s house. Kinu-chan was strapped to a reclining bouncy seat, staring goggle-eyed at her own drool-covered hands.  
  
“Then we’re in this together!” I chirped, warming up the formula and handing the bottle to Akito. “I’m about to pick her up, so hang onto this for a second.”  
  
We sat on the couch, Kinu-chan nestled in the crook of my arm, whimpering and grasping for the bottle. Akito nearly dropped it in an attempt to guide it toward her gaping mouth, but after a few seconds of struggle Kinu-chan was sucking down her meal.  
  
“Is she eating too quickly?” asked Akito, hands hovering over the bottle. “I don’t want her getting a stomachache.”  
  
“It’s probably fine,” I assured her. I wasn't worried about her food intake, but the fact that a baby girl was resting in my arms made me nervous. I no longer transformed - and I knew that if I did, I’d drop her on the couch - but the terror of hurting her in the process remained. How did Hatori, who had to carry her around all day every day, deal with that fear?  
  
Kinu-chan’s existence made me realize that I might one day have a child too. My wife, who was feeding the baby with an expression of sheer panic on her face, could have a child, too. Hatori had opened up the path to the future for all of us.  
  
My thoughts were interrupted when Kinu-chan spit up all over herself, my hands, the bottle, and Akito’s face.  
  
Instinctually, I reached to shield Kinu-chan from Akito’s fury. None came. Instead, she just wiped away the scum, laughing. “I messed up," she said. “I’ll get a washcloth - maybe you should bounce her so she doesn’t cry while we're waiting.”  
  
My heart slowed in my chest. Akito was more trustworthy than I’d thought she was. We were moving forward.  
  
~`~`~

When I was very young, I felt such a thunderous surge of love that it nearly tore me apart from the inside. I thought that I would never feel something so powerful ever again, and I spent my entire life chasing that high. I thought that falling in love with Akito would grant me that same sense of ecstasy.

It didn’t. I found other reasons to love her - her bewildered-but-pleased expression after Tohru and her friends kidnapped her for a spa day; her blistering disdain for the characters she hated in the books we read together; the swell of her hips beneath a sundress. 

Human love wasn’t inferior to cursed love - in many ways, it was better. She wasn’t my heart walking around outside of my chest, she was the person who helped me clean pigeon shit off of our property’s fence or slow danced with me in the kitchen to Gackt’s _Tsuki no Uta_.  
  
I did not fear what she could do to me, or to the other people that I loved. I did not fear that I could fail her. We shared out brokenness with each other, and stood by and gave comfort while we tried to fix ourselves. We were comfortable in our love, as kind to each other as we could be. It was a good life. 

But nothing I felt, no matter how sweet, was as intense as that initial love. While the rest of my family was moving on to full and happy curse-free lives, mine felt like a shadow of what it used to be.  
  
When Akito screamed at me to come to the bathroom, and shoved a positive pregnancy test into my face, I felt like somebody injected pure otherworldly love into my veins. Whoever this human growing inside of my wife was, I already loved them. I would continue to love them, no matter how vile or lovely they turned out to be. That they could be hurt filled me with inexpressible sorrow, and that I might be able to make them smile made me so happy I thought I could die.  
  
It felt like cursed love, but the curse had been broken.

Hugging herself and shaking her head, Akito asked, “what if I’m so afraid that they’ll leave me that I start treating them the same way I treated Yuki and everyone else?”  
  
It was a moment before I could speak again. Finally, I managed to choke out that I didn’t know. The idea that she might not have this child - my bond! my ticket out of the void! - filled me with dread. But she was right. Unless we were careful, we could easily destroy this child with our excruciating version of love.  
  
“What if I’m as terrible as my mother was?” she said, grabbing my arm. “Or if I’m worse? Shigure, what should I do? Should I keep it? Do I deserve to be a mother after everything I’ve done?” 

“Do you want to be one?” I asked, my voice bland and chipper. I would not tell her how badly I wanted this. If I did, her fear of abandonment would make it impossible to choose her own course.  
  
Clutching her stomach, Akito told me that she did. “I’ll need a lot of help,” she said. “I don’t want to treat this baby the way I treated you all when you were cursed.”  
  
“I have the same concerns. I already love them so much, I’m worried I’ll forget that they’re human.”  
  
She grabbed my hand and guided it toward the dip of her abdomen. “So we’re on the same page,” she said.  



End file.
